7
Ashley
There’s nothing between us but air and the scent of him. I breathe in soap and salt and spring water. It’s the way the sea would smell if I were a mermaid. I can’t know that, I can’t, but I also can’t breathe. I feel every heave of my chest, every dig of my teeth into my lip.
Everything that happens now—
I can’t stop it.
No one would be able to stop it. Not the cook, who’s the only one in earshot and doesn’t seem to care. He hasn’t stopped banging things together. For a beat I wonder if this is what my mother felt like when she was taken.
But.
I wish Poseidon would touch me again.
This thought is crazy. I must be out of my mind. He said I was his hostage. It’s the most horrible repetition of our family history. But if Poseidon did put his fingers in my hair again, if he did pull me against his body, then at least it would be happening, and the agonizing wait would be over.
Surviving this wait seems less and less likely with every second that passes. My knees are shaking, hands too, my eyes struggling to close. His wrist and forearms block my vision on either side, and if he doesn’t take his hands away from the wall, then he might lean down—
He might lean down…
He curses under his breath and moves.
And because I am pathetic, because I am lost in whatever this moment is, I close my eyes and wait for the rough, searing kiss I know is coming.
Instead my legs give out under the sweep of his arm and I find myself carried in them, curled against a hard chest. My eyelids are so heavy, so heavy, and I can’t keep them open another second. I’m resigned to my fate.
My fate turns out to be the same bed I left not long ago. He bends, and there’s a whisper of fabric, like he’s pulling down the blankets, and then he lowers me to the mattress.
Pulls those blankets over me.
Sits down in the chair next to the bed with a sigh.
Why are you sighing? I want to ask. You’re the one who’s keeping me here. But of course I don’t. Of course I sink headfirst into sleep.
And snap awake sometime later to an empty room.
I know he’s not here because it’s easier to breathe. There’s less pressure on my heart and on my lungs and on all the parts of me that scramble to find footing when he’s around. No footsteps come near the door.
If I’m going to escape the same end as my mother, then it has to be now.
The plan comes together in a few blinks. I have limited energy, that’s true, but I survived floating on the ocean before. I can do it again. It’s better than staying here and being at this man’s mercy. I’ll take my chances with dark seas. Moonlight peeks in around the curtains on the windows, but it’s not as bright as it was a few nights ago. If I wait much longer I won’t even have that.
I ease myself out of bed as quickly as I can. He has a desk, which I ignore, and a small chest by the bed. It’s filled with boxes. I open one and find a pearl. That won’t help me. I put it back.
The dresser is next. It has lots of things inside, and there are more in a set of drawers built in by the window. A small watertight container is the first thing to come to hand. I don’t have any food from the kitchen but I find some abandoned Power Bars and beef jerky. Both of those go into the bag.
Then there’s the compass.
It’s heavy and old, with an engraving on the inside of the cover I don’t bother to read. The needle tips in its glass housing, always swinging back to north. My heart has slowly moved up into my throat and higher, into my ears. Poseidon will be back soon. When he comes back, my chance is gone.
The last thing to go into the watertight bag is a map. I have no idea if it’s a map of the place we’re sailing to or another part of his strange collection, but I shove it into the bag anyway and close the seal on the top.
Lights burn in the empty hallway. Muffled sounds from the kitchen tell me the cook is awake. I’m hoping this is the graveyard shift, and that whoever else is here will be sleeping.
I don’t risk the stairs. The last time I went looking for Poseidon I found him on the deck of the ship, near the top of those stairs. There has to be more than one way out.
The hallway stretches out like a horror movie, but I take a big breath and go. Past a series of closed doors. Past one that’s open a few inches, low voices murmuring inside.
I make it to the galley. My lungs burn. I’ve been holding my breath, trying not to make any noise, but I have to take one now. The galley is to the left. And to the right...
Another staircase.
I could swoon with relief but I climb the stairs instead. At the top, a heavy wooden door is my last obstacle.
It opens with a gentle turn of the knob, letting me out into the night.
I’m on a different part of the deck now, on the port side. Far down near the bow, a man sits on top of a collection of crates, his back to me. Nobody else is in sight. I pull the door closed behind me. It’s practically soundless next to the rush of wind on water.
There’s one more thing I need, and I find it strapped to the wall five feet down from the door. A big, white buoy. Even if I could swim—and I mean really swim, not kick in a general direction—I’d need this.
Do not think of how deep the ocean is, Ashley. Do not think of how dark it is.
The waterproof bag cooperates when I tie it to the buoy, then the buoy to myself via the tow rope.
And then I step to the railing of the ship.
For all the wood inside, it’s pure metal on the hull, metal sheets, metal bolts. And… yes. Metal ladders at intervals around the outside of the ship. My heart kicks up to full speed. It’s a different thing, looking down over the side of a ship when no one is actively trying to kill you.
Someone could be trying to kill me soon.
I close my eyes to the black, moonlit water and force myself to remember how it felt to have him so close, so angry. He was angry. And he wanted to act on it.
I saw those things in his eyes.
This is no time to question if I’d want that. No time for the small voice that won’t stop whispering about those eyes, those hands, that brutal beauty…
The railing is harder to climb than I thought it would be. Cold metal bites into my arches with every step. My thighs are trembling by the time I get my leg over the final one and inch my way over to the nearest ladder. Jesus, if there were ever a time for my feet not to be slippery, this would be it. I have no such luck. It would be a win either way, wouldn’t it? If I fall, then the end result would be the same.
Another stroke of luck—the ship is idling, not speeding away through the night. I never asked Poseidon why we’re going slowly enough that a person could get into the ocean without getting sucked under.
My pulse is louder than the surf when I get to the end of the ladder. I keep one hand on the buoy and the other on one rung of the ladder, my feet curling in a death grip. “Don’t think about it,” I whisper to myself. Saying it out loud doesn’t help. What I need to think about is jumping straight out. The ship isn’t moving fast but it is moving and this will all be pointless if I die from slamming my head against the ladder.
I have one single trick for entering the water.
It takes several deep breaths to put it into action.